Thanks for the Memories
by AlxM
Summary: Dean has five months left until his deal is due, and Sam gets a camera. Set season 3. Brotherly love and angst. Canonical character death.


**Title** : Thanks for the Memories

 **Characters/Pairings** : Sam, Dean (gen), brief Sam/Jessica

 **Warning** : spoilers for season 3, T for swearing

 **Summary** : Dean has five months left before his deal is due, and Sam gets a camera. Set season 3. Brotherly angst and love. Sam's P.O.V (third person).

* * *

 **Thanks for the Memories**

The camera's given to him by a woman named Katherine Montgomery.

She was another victim in a city in Nebraska, one that they saved the life of from the poltergeists that haunted her house. They barged in at exactly the right time into her study room, a desk having collided into her hips and holding her to the wall, her husband desperately trying to haul it off from her.

They kicked in a corner, threw in the poultice, and in an explosion of white light, it was gone. There were three of them in the house.

She's a photographer, that much is obvious from the moderate collection of cameras in her bedroom, organized neatly on a wall shelf. There are models from recent years as well as from earlier years, which suggest her depth of passion for her work.

He's examining a Canon Powershot A70, silver-colored and stylish, while she speaks to Dean. Her husband stands beside her, both of them with the deepest gratitude in their eyes. It's not every day that people really know about what they do, and it's not every day that they receive any credit and appreciation for it, so it always feels a bit strange to have it happen on the occasion that it does.

He's staring at this one camera, the one that reminds him of the one Jessica had. He thinks it looks similar to it, but maybe it doesn't, because he can't quite remember the exact appearance, except that it was light and small, rectangular and silver, which may be about a thousand other cameras.

Jessica liked photography. He asked her what she liked about it once, and she told him it wasn't like painting to her, because she loved making pictures from scratch more than snapping them and having them all made for her, but she still enjoyed finding something pretty and keeping a piece of it with her.

She said, "I guess I just like capturing beauty." And then smiled and aimed the camera at him and pressed the button.

She painted him a lot. She also took pictures of him a lot. He felt self-conscious and awkward every time she did, not having been faced with the lens much before, but he always tried to smile for her. She told him he was very photogenic, sounded like she honestly believed that, but when he saw the pictures for himself, he couldn't see it. He looked weird. He thought his jaws seemed kind of uneven, or his nose too big, or his hair too messy, and he always looked awkward and uncomfortable and trying hard not to look like it.

She still found him beautiful. She said he looked real. Authentic. He never understood what she meant by that.

"Do you like it?"

He startles slightly, jerked out of his thoughts. He didn't notice Mrs. Montgomery step up next to him. He glances at her. She's young enough, early-thirties, a brunette with crystal gray eyes. They make her look fierce and intimidating despite her gentler nature. She's watching him, smiling mellowly.

"Oh...uh, yeah. Yeah I do. I mean, I don't know much about cameras, but this one looks good."

She reaches out towards the wall shelf, grabs it off along with its charger and brings it towards herself. She scrutinizes it for a while, her expression slightly nostalgic.

And then she opens it up, takes out its SD card. She slides open her drawers below the wall shelf, grabs another one, and puts it in.

And then she holds it out to him, along with its charger. "Take it. It's yours now."

That surprises him, kind of catches him off guard. He didn't expect her to offer it to him. "Oh...no. No, I...it's okay. I'm not really that into taking pictures."

She holds it out further, insistent. "Take it, please. It's the least I can do for how much you've helped us."

"Mrs. Montgomery, really. I don't know what I'll do with it. I'm not a photographer."

She smiles. "You don't have to be. You can just use it for things you find beautiful, that you want to remember, so that you can look back on them later."

He tried to protest once more, but she takes his hand and places the device in it and wraps his fingers around it, settles her other hand on top of it. "This nowhere near repays what you've done. Not in the slightest. But I'd feel better if you didn't leave empty-handed, if you took something from me."

He accepts it because he knows she won't let him go otherwise. He can see it in the determination in her resolute, gray eyes, in the desire to give back even a little bit of what he gave her.

 **…**

He pockets it in his jacket, sure that eventually it will find its way to the bottom of his duffel bag, or the trunk, or somewhere. Will just sit around until it gets broken somehow.

And then he hears Dean laugh.

He says something that makes Dean laugh, sunlight streaming in through windows and washing over him, and he's watching him, and he feels a sorrow, a love, a meld of it, but not the happiness that comes with hearing it, because he remembers that in a couple of months, he'll never hear it again if he doesn't find a way to save him, and he has tried for six and he's still nowhere near finding that way.

He's thinking about how he'll never hear him laugh again, or sing (horribly), or talk (sometimes at the same time as chewing). He'll never see him sit in the booth across from him at a diner, stealing his fries and winking at him just before he makes him cringe internally as he delivers his lame pick-up lines to the waitress.

He'll never see him in the driver's seat, hands gripping around the circle of the wheel, drumming his fingers to his rock tunes. He'll never see that soft, quirky smile he sometimes gives him out of nowhere, for no reason at all, but it makes him feel like there's somebody in this world he means something to. He'll never—

"Sam?" Dean's voice snaps him out of his reverie. "You okay, man?"

"Yeah." He nods, clears his throat. "Sorry. What were you saying?"

That's Dean's cue to launch into a rant again about some dumb action movie he watched last night.

He subtly takes out his camera from his pocket, rolls it over in his hands and stares at it for a moment. He turns it on, sets it to video. He hides it between his palms, leaves a gap for the camera lenses pointing at Dean, and he records it all.

 **…**

The second time he does it, Dean's sitting across from him at a booth. He doesn't really try to hide it this time. He raises the camera up to his eye-level, Dean's face focusing in and out in the viewer. The green of his eyes are stunningly bright in the daylight, falling in on him through the laminated glass window next to him.

"Do I look like Angelina Jolie?" Dean asks, smirking. Poses a little, angling his body sideways.

Sam snorts. "You're an idiot."

"At least I'm hot." He grins, looks too bright and young in the light. Sam's heart aches a little. "Can't say the same for your ugly mug."

"At least I have a brain," Sam retorts, rolling his eyes. His elbows are up on the table to hold the camera steady.

"Where'd you even get that thing?" Dean asks, jerking his chin at it in the viewer.

"Mrs. Montgomery gave it to me," he replies, shrugging. "Her way of saying thanks."

"A camera?" Dean says, raising an eyebrow. "We've never even held a proper camera in our lives. Especially one that fancy."

"Yeah, I know," he huffs.

The waitress appears beside them, notepad and a pen in hand. Blonde, blue eyes, very conventionally pretty, and sure to be on the receiving end of Dean's horrible pick-up lines. "What can I get you boys?"

Dean puts on his best charming smile, leans forward. He briefly glances at her tag and then looks back up at her. "Is your number on the menu, Irene?" Sam cringes hard on the inside, has to school his face straight. _How are we even related_? he wonders, not for the first time.

Irene eyes him nonchalantly, one eyebrow furrowed. "It's not available today. Anything else?"

Sam tries not to laugh and fails, grinning so hard his cheeks hurt at the expression on Dean's face. He looks embarrassed and taken aback, his eyes going huge and puppy-like, cheeks stung red. Dean barely ever gets rejected by women, and barely ever this bluntly, so when things like these happen, Sam likes to be there to laugh at him for it.

"Bacon cheeseburger with extra onions," he mumbles, looking down at the table sullenly. Sam almost pities him.

When she walks off with their orders, Sam, gleeful like any typical younger sibling that just watched their big brother humiliate himself, tells him, "I just got all that on video."

"Oh, shut up," he snaps testily, glaring at him.

 **…**

He takes a lot of pictures of Dean on the sly.

Just ordinary little things, like him washing his car. Him cleaning guns, brows scrunched up and lips jutted out in concentration. Him driving, mouth slightly open as he sang under his breath, fingers lifted halfway through a tap, under the wind and sunset catching on his hair. Him sitting in the booth across from him, eating or talking while he goes in to take a bite or just sitting, staring off to the side at something. Him from the back, walking across the road, on sidewalks. Him through the glass of motel receptions or gas marts at the counter. Him filling up his car with gasoline. Him on the bed, watching TV. Sometimes, if he can, him laughing. Smiling (Sam can never say it, but he likes those the best).

Sometimes Dean sees him. Most times he doesn't. He tries to make sure of that because he knows it's starting to piss Dean off with how often he does it. But now it's getting hard when he's becoming hyperaware of everything. If Sam moves even a little bit in the corner of his eye, it's enough to earn him a sharp glance, followed by a wary scrutiny.

After a certain point, Sam stops really caring.

"Get that thing out of my face, will you?" Dean grumbles irritably.

Sam feigns confusion. "Why? Does it make you self-conscious?"

"No…" It definitely makes him self-conscious, the way he says it. Sam feels guilty, but he can't stop when he thinks of _only five months left_. "but it makes me wanna hurl it out of the window. Scratch that, it makes me wanna hurl _you_ out of the window."

"You can try doing that last one, but I don't think you'll get far," he mutters in an undertone.

"Look, I get that being annoying is in your little brother job description, but this is going way too far. I wake up in the middle of the night to you taking pictures of me _sleeping_ , okay? _Sleeping_. That's some—some serious—Edward Cullen level creepy shit there."

Well, okay, when he puts it so bluntly like that, it does sound weird.

Sam sighs, stops the recording, and lowers the camera. "Okay, fine. I'll tone it down a bit if it bothers you that much."

"How about you tone it down a _lot_?"

He really does try, but it's hard when time won't stop moving towards the end.

 **…**

It's December 25th and the last Christmas Dean will ever have and the last Christmas he will ever have with Dean (if he doesn't find a way).

In the yellow hue of Christmas lights, the gentle haze of slight intoxication, the world looks kind of beautifully surreal. Everything's too bright, Dean's laughter too loud, his own voice too loud in his head, too far away. Dean's face is free of lines as he relaxes back against the couch, a lazy and easy smile on his face as he watches the game, and under these yellow Christmas lights, he looks bright and young again in a way that it makes Sam's chest hurt.

He watches him when he's not looking, and feels it again, that need to hold these moments of time in his hands, keep it in a box and lock it so that he can have them forever (so that he can have them after Dean's gone). But he can't. So he gets off the couch. Dean glances at him briefly, before his attention lands back to the TV. Sam moves to his bed, sits down and reaches into the corner of his pillow where he keeps it, picks up his silver camera.

He holds it in his hands, feels its weight. It's light, but he feels the gravity of its importance in his chest. He turns it on, waits for the screen to show up.

He enters the gallery and clicks on the last picture taken, presses the next button, flipping through the many pictures he's taken in the past couple of days. They're all of Dean. Dean smiling, grinning, laughing. Dean half-way through an eyeroll, followed by one of him deadpanning as he throws up his middle finger (which got blurred in motion), mid-talking, " _capture this, bitch_." Dean sleeping. Singing. Driving. Dean through numerous glasses of motel receptions and gas marts. On sidewalks, across booths. All the places they often go every day. Many videos in similar locations. The pictures are all the same, some blurry and awful, but he never deletes any. He wants them all.

Maybe it's the drunkenness. Maybe it's because alcohol doesn't go well with sorrow and impending loss and grief, but his face kind of crumples up along with his heart, his vision blurring.

He plays one video, the sound overshadowed by the noises of the football game from the TV. It's just Dean humming along to the music in his car, combining with the roars of the engine to evoke a feeling of home. He's thinking of how quickly he's moving towards a life that he can't even imagine right now, because every time he does, he feels like he can't breathe.

He looks up at Dean, at Dean here, now, his back to Sam as he's watching the TV. He had wanted to tell him, _you know that I love you, right? More than anything_. But he couldn't get the words out, couldn't speak when they tried to come up, so instead he asked if he wanted to watch the game. He still wants to tell him that, but these are not the kind of things that they say.

He lifts the camera, sets it to video. The camera focuses in and out, until it settles. Forms an image of the back of the couch, the back of Dean's shirt and head, lights shining down on him, radiating all over the room and making it golden, making Dean golden. He feels his heart too light in his chest, too swollen and tender, as he watches him in the viewer, as he watches Dean slur a drunken whoop at a score, raising his beer bottle celebratorily.

 _You know that I love you, right? More than anything_.

 **…**

Dean reaches for the remote, holds it out at the TV and presses his finger down on the red power button. The TV abruptly blacks out shut. He stands up slowly with a groan, putting down his bottle on the table as he does so. He stretches his arms and back up, a pop sound emanating.

"I'm headin' t'bed," he says, slurring slightly. He stumbles a little around on his feet.

When he faces Sam, he squints. "You creepin' on me again?"

"Do you have a secret?"

"Wha'?"

"I want to know." Sam smiles, sad and soft. Thinks he's a little more drunk than he thought. He's talking to Dean in the camera viewer, holding it up. "Tell me something you've never told me."

"Man, I'm beat—"

"Please."

It's that one word. That one word that will make Dean do anything, even things he doesn't want to. It's why Sam doesn't like using it.

Dean eyes him for a moment, an unreadable expression on his face, and then puffs out a breath. He walks over to the bed, the camera following him, and plops down on the edge.

He throws his arms open in the viewer, lips pursed as if he's just trying to humor him and would rather be passed out right now. "Ask away."

"Tell me anything about yourself that I don't know."

"Well…" he huffs. "I feel like I'm being forced to introduce myself in front of a class on the first day of school, and you know we've had a lot of those."

"Dean…"

"Fine. Okay. And then you stop aiming that stupid camera in my face 24/7, deal?"

"I'll try."

Dean looks heavenward, as if he knows that really means, " _nope_." He breathes deeply, thinking.

"I've always wanted to be a guitarist. Like, in a really cool rock band."

Sam's mouth quirks up. "Yeah?"

"Yeah." Dean shrugs, looks a bit shy about it, glancing at his hands.

"Did you ever… like, get a chance to play a guitar?"

"Once. Was acoustic though."

"When?" Sam's eyebrows furrow. They've never had a guitar. They could never carry something that big around in a car.

"Remember that farm I went to? When I was sixteen? It didn't all suck."

Sam smiles. "You'd be good."

Dean scoffs, shaking his head. "You've never even heard me play. Are we done playing twenty questions now?"

"I wanna know more," Sam says, trying not to let his eyes water, swallowing. He doesn't want this to end. He doesn't ever want it to be May. He wants time to stop here, wants Dean to stay here forever so that he can watch him sing and talk and laugh and eat and drive and just—just be fucking _alive_.

But he only has five months left of that now.

Dean gazes at him for a while, past the camera, eyes flicking up and down his face as if reading him, brows pinched.

And then he asks, "You gonna tell me why you've been goin' Annie Leibovitz on me?"

"I thought you didn't want to play twenty questions."

"Seems like we're going to play it anyway."

He doesn't do anything for a while, just breathes in the sadness that's drowning him from the inside.

And then he slowly lowers the camera, stops the recording and shuts it off. He stares down at it in his hands, between his knees, and doesn't say anything for a while.

"It's because I don't want to forget," he finally says, gaze a little too fixed to his hands.

"Forget what? Me? You're not going to forget me if you don't document everything on me, Sam."

"No, I mean…of course not, but… I don't want to forget anything. Anything. What you, uh…" he trails off, knows that he's about to cross that line into chick-flick territory that Dean has a rule against. But he's a little bit drunk and a lot tired and sad, so maybe it doesn't matter as much right now. "You know. What you sound and look like, when you're doing stuff. When you talk or sing or laugh or drive or...I don't know. Just...just you? I don't want to forget anything about you."

It seems to render Dean speechless, because Sam looks up at him and he's looking back at him, puzzled and taken aback, his eyebrows pinched. Maybe he's thinking that's stupid. But sometimes, Sam thinks that maybe Dean doesn't really realize how much it's all hurting him, to watch him be here and know he won't be in a while and how much he wants to hold on to every bit of time that's passing him by, to have him here and feel like he's slipping out of his hands like water with every day that goes past, the soul-crushing panic and anxiety he feels on a daily basis when he thinks about the time he has left and how it's all going away and how he's still not even close to saving the one person that has mattered more than anything to him. Maybe Dean feels that way too, because he's going to the most biblically terrifying place for torture and punishment and because Sam's not the only one who's losing someone here, but Dean doesn't get that someone can feel that way for him too. Dean's never seen his own value like Sam has.

"You know I'm going to do everything I can to save you, but…" his voice falls away, and he kind of can't breathe because his throat and chest feel heavy. "but what happens if I can't? I mean, we're down to our last five months, and if I can't get you out of this, all I'll have of you is that car and some pictures in its trunk. If this is all we have now, if I never see you again after this… then it's sure not fucking enough."

And then he thinks it will never be enough. No matter how many pictures and videos he takes, no matter what he will have left of Dean, it will never be enough. It will never be like having him alive again. He can't make it like that no matter what he does, unless he finds a way to really keep him alive.

Suddenly, he doesn't really see the point anymore, not when all it will do is leave him hollow and hungry for more time, for more captured memories, for Dean to be here again. Not when all it does is piss Dean off, and if he is never coming back, then this is not how he wants it to be.

He breathes in softly, jaw clenching as his lips quiver. He leans over and sets the camera on the night table. "I'll stop if you want me to," he mumbles.

"Sam…" Dean says, exhales quietly.

"Good night, Dean."

And then he lays down on the bed, turns on his other side, doesn't take the time to shuck his boots and jeans because he's too close to breaking and he doesn't want Dean to see that.

 **…**

He wakes up the next morning with a headache, his boots off and the covers on top of him, and Dean yelling in his ear, horribly chirpy.

"Rise and shine, Sammy!"

Sam groans, buries his face into the pillow. Dean shoves at his shoulder, his voice sounding as though it's coming through the biggest shit-eating grin. "Come on! It's wakey time, Sammy boy!"

When he flips to his back to glare at him, he ends up facing the lens of his camera instead.

"You getting your lazy ass up? I brought you your girly Pumpkin Spice Latte."

He's left lying there, staring baffled at this very strange image of Dean holding his camera, pointing it at him. Part of it is obviously to catch him in this messy, sleepy, ridiculous state, but Dean's been acting like he's allergic to that 'damn camera', as he often addresses it, ever since Sam started going overboard with it.

And then he remembers last night, remembers their conversation, and maybe he gets it.

"You're a jerk," Sam says lightly, voice slightly rough and groggy with sleep, looking up at him, but he's smiling softly, and he's embarrassed to realize that it sounds a lot like the way people say _I love you_.

"Bitch, you love me." Dean grins, and Sam rolls his eyes, as if he isn't thinking, _yeah I do_. But he can't say that, because that's not something that they do.

"Yeah, you tell yourself that," Sam huffs, but he's still smiling that soft smile.

"Well, I do love me too," Dean says with a cocky smirk, waggling his eyebrows.

Sam snorts. "That's not what I meant."

"Sure you didn't." Dean pats his shoulder. "Anyway, I got you that nasty-ass chicken salad you like from that diner down the street. So get off your ass and freshen up." With that, he jabs his finger into the record button to stop it, turns the camera off and holds it out to him.

Sam takes it, glances up at Dean, and hears what he's not saying when he gives him a small half-smile.

 _It's okay. You do what you have to to be okay._

 **…**

He finds it two weeks after Dean dies.

It's after two weeks that he's able to get out of bed and do anything besides stare at the white wall and watch his brother's body get shredded to pieces by invisible claws and jaws over and over. He gets drunk on nearly a half of the whiskey bottle, until he can't talk or think straight, and he does it because it's the only way he can relive those moments of Dean's life (his life with Dean) again.

And he needs to see him, even if it's only on a screen. Even if it will not feed the hunger (for vengeance, for Dean to be here again) and fill the hollowness inside of him.

So he reaches out for the camera in the drawer beside his bed, slides it open and takes it out shakily with the heaviest hands, lying on his bed as his grief pushes him down into the mattress, settles into his exhausted body like a disease. He puts whichever of the two SD cards into the camera and turns it on, goes to the gallery (turns out to be the second one) and scrolls down to the very first video.

Dean in the car, singing the dirtiest song he knew at the top of his lungs to annoy the fuck out of him. _It wouldn't annoy me now_ , he thinks. It didn't then either. Not really, not when he knew he was holding a camera that was catching the final moments of his brother's life. He just wanted to make him laugh.

He replays it over and over, without counting (mostly for the way Dean breaks off laughing after he glances at him behind the camera), before moving on to another. He looks from one picture or video on the screen to the next with sunken, itchy, tired eyes, looks at Dean in them all as closely as he can with the alcohol and fatigue making the world hazy and dim, taking in every little detail that he can about him in every one of them.

He finds it when he reaches the end. A video. An image of Dean's hand close to the camera behind the play button as he's reaching out to press record.

He's drunk and broken and confused, and he's not sure what he's expecting, some kind of lame prank by his brother (of course only Dean would, five days before he knew he's going to Hell) or somehow an accidental recording by Dean that he forgot to delete (which, probably not seeing as he's reaching out from such a distance to press the record button). He doesn't know.

Sam presses play.

Dean's fingers are pulling away as he scoots back on a chair. It's the last motel they stayed in, the camera on a desk, the lamp on somewhere off to the side and making everything bright and yellow in the dark. He can see a bit of himself sleeping on the left bed behind him, after days of overworking to find something to get Dean out of the deal, to no avail.

He remembers. He remembers the way Dean pulled his laptop out of his hands while he sat on the bed, ordered him to sleep. Him panicking and freaking out, desperate and angry, and Dean just sitting down beside him and grabbing his chin and making Sam look him in the eye as he said, "You're gonna be okay. No matter what happens, whether I'm here or not, you're gonna be okay because that's what you've always been, no matter what crap you go through. You've always been the strongest one out of all of us."

He was so fucking wrong.

 _Didn't you know, Dean? It's because I always had you_.

Now Dean's gone, and he's not okay and he's not strong.

Dean looks a bit nervous in the video, has been silent for the first couple of seconds. He's looking down somewhere below the frame of the camera, seemingly a spot on the desk. He turns back to glance at him on the bed in the video, before bringing his gaze back to the camera.

Dean swallows a little, and then flickers a smile, still nervous, still bright and soft in the light, still too fucking young to die yet.

"Well, um… I guess I'll probably be dead by the time you see this, so... it doesn't really matter if this…" He trails off, glancing back down again, and huffs a small laugh. He's having trouble finding words, or being comfortable enough to say what he wants to. "You know, if this completely massacres my masculinity."

This is a goodbye. This is the fucking socially awkward speech that Dean didn't want Sam to give him only a few hours before it all ended.

"I...I don't know if I have to put this in words. I always just kind of figured you knew… I mean, it's why we're here now, huh?" His voice goes quiet at the end, love and sorrow and guilt. He smiles ruefully. "But I'll say it, because I don't know if I'm ever seein' you again and you need to hear it. So here it is, in all its blunt, raw, no-bullshit, chick-flick form…"

And he has this horrible jolt of a feeling where he simultaneously wants to break things and break down, but he's too tired to do either, so he just lets his face crumple as the tears gather in his eyes, brushes his fingers over Dean's face on the screen.

"Sammy, you…" his words fade away, goes breathless with the weight of whatever he's about to say suffocating him. "You mean fucking _every_ thing to me… but I guess these words don't even begin to cover what you really mean to me."

Something deep inside of Sam throbs hard and painful, seeing him, hearing him, hearing these words. His vision swims in front of him with salt water and vertigo.

He laughs a little, shaking his head, and he looks brittle, his eyes spring green and tired and soft. "God, you. The way I love you… never been able to make any damn sense of it. I just look at you and I know I'd do anything and everything for you, to keep you safe and alive, because there's really nothing beyond you for me, nothing in this world that I can possibly love as much as you."

And then he stops, kind of blinks like he's realized how deep and lost he had gotten into his feelings and words. There's a flicker of self-consciousness, the way his gaze flits away and he shifts on his seat, looks down at his hands again. This is the rawest, the most vulnerable and open Sam's ever seen him, and his heart clenches to see how fragile his brother truly was, how much he felt inside despite showing so little. Sam knew it, and yet he didn't.

"That sounds so fucking sappy and dumb…" he mutters, snorting self-condescendingly. He reaches up and scratches the back of his head shyly, suddenly embarrassed.

He hates that he can only hear these things after Dean's dead.

"The things you make me say, man," he scoffs. Sam chuckles through the lump in his throat, because of course Dean would dump the blame on him for this. "These might be the most moronic things I've ever said. But I guess I'm dying so it doesn't matter, huh?"

And just like that, everything gets somber again.

"You once asked me what would happen, if I don't survive this, if you can't save me. You remember that? And the answer is that I don't know. But today I told you that you're going to be okay no matter what happens. You always are in the end, after everything." But not after this, he wants to tell him. God, not after this. "I _know_ that, and I know _you_. You've always been stronger than me. That's another reason why we're here, Sammy."

And here come the tears, his face twisting with sorrow, the gutted sobs seizing his lungs and ripping out of him. Because he's exhausted and drunk and grieving, and Dean is dead and he is still here living a life he doesn't want if it can't be with his brother. And Dean believed in him too much when he doesn't deserve that, and he loved him too much when he doesn't deserve that either.

"Where…" He pauses, voice fading off. He swallows, looking down. "Where I'm going...I can't take anything of you with me. Not your pictures. Not your videos. Not your voice or the sound of your laugh." He lifts his head again, smiles tightly, and his red-rimmed eyes are shining, blurring. "Memories...that's all I get. I guess, of you and with you, that's, um... that's enough for me. So… thank you. For making a shitty life worth living. For the memories I get to keep with me forever, when I go."

His fingers rub down his eyes, smudges tears, and then he smirks like he hasn't just completely fucked Sam up from the inside out. "Well, that concludes the sappiest chick-flick moment I've ever taken part in, which is all your fault by the way because I'm pretty sure your hormonal mood swings are like, contagious somehow."

His shoulders are shaking against the mattress, and his hands are shaking as they cradle the camera, his thumb stroking over Dean on the screen.

"And I guess this is our goodbye, Sammy."

And then he has the tenderest smile on his face, weighed only by a hint of concealed sorrow. The yellow light is making him gentle and bright. Sam tries to smile back, but his own face is too tight, too heavy, too twisted up.

Dean reaches out his hand, fingers shadowing over the camera lens.

And the video ends there.

He rolls to his side, curls up as he clutches the camera to his chest. His other hand comes up, his fist pressing against his lips as he chokes on the horrible grief in his body, as everything comes pouring out even though his body has gone too weak and tired for it.

He wants to go back. He wants Dean to come back.

And he is here now, stuck in this life where he will never see Dean again, in this life that he could barely imagine before it came, and all he has left to hold him above water are things that just make him hollow and hungry, things that will never be the same thing as having him alive and safe here.

 **...**

When the grief and whiskey become too much for his body, and sleep finally comes, he dreams of Dean bloodied and burning, screaming Sam's name.

* * *

 **Author's Note** : Hello!

I hoped you enjoyed this! If you've reached until here, thank you so much for giving my story a chance, and for reading. It means a lot! I'd love to know what you thought, if you have a moment to spare. Constructive criticism is welcome, as long as it's polite and respectful.

Also, if there are any readers of 'Unforgivable' here reading this, I'd just like to say one final thank you to you for making my journey of writing that story so wonderful with your support.


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